Keynote Lectures

Prof. Dan BRACEWELL

Prof. Dan BRACEWELL

Daniel G. Bracewell is Professor of Bioprocess Analysis at the UCL Department of Biochemical Engineering. He has made major contributions to the fundamental understanding of biopharmaceutical purification operations, including collaborations with Thailand, India and the USA. He has authored more than 90 peer reviewed journal articles in the area to date and currently supervises 15 doctoral and postdoctoral projects, many of these studies are in collaboration with industry. One such project was the basis from which the spinout Puridify a nanofibre absorption technology company was created. He is academic lead for the UCL-Pall Biotech Centre of Excellence.

Scale-up Issues in Preparative Enantioselective Chromatography

Dr Geoffrey COX B.

Dr Geoffrey COX B.

After having earned a PhD in organic electrochemistry at the University of Sheffield and spent 2 years as a postdoc in photochemistry at the University of Reading, Dr Cox joined the Laboratory of the Government Chemist where he spent some years in R&D in the then new field of HPLC, developing both bonded phase chromatography media and instrumentation. He joined DuPont’s instrument business as European Applications Chemist for their HPLC operations, acting as technical resource for both Western and Eastern Europe before being transferred to their HPLC columns R&D group in the USA where he was principally involved in the support for the commercial scale purification of Humulin by reversed phase HPLC and the development of the theory of preparative scale HPLC in association with Dr Lloyd Snyder. He joined Prochrom in Indianapolis and later moved to the French headquarters as Director R&D where he developed Simulated Moving Bed systems and further improved computer simulation software for preparative and SMB chromatography. In 1997 he was appointed Director, Technology at Chiral Technologies Europe in Strasbourg where he was responsible for all aspects of R&D as well as the contract purification group which focused on HPLC and SMB purification of enantiomers. In 2001 he returned to the USA as Vice President, Technology at Chiral Technologies Inc where he was responsible for the separation service group as well as research into enantioseparations. He started the US subsidiary of PIC Solution SAS of Avignon, France (a company manufacturing and marketing preparative SFC systems) in 2011 and was President of PIC Solution Inc until September 2018. He is currently a consultant to the chromatographic industry.

The Evolution of Chromatographic Processes for Small Molecules Between Research and Production of APIs

Dr Gunnar GARKE

Dr Gunnar GARKE

Gunnar Garke is currently working as expert and laboratory manager for preparative HPLC at Bayer AG Pharmaceuticals. He is responsible for the development and upscaling of chromatographic purification processes of small molecule APIs from g to multi-kg scale. In addition Gunnar Garke is also involved in and a consultant for commercial chromatographic manufacturing. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the Institute of Biochemical Engineering at the Gesellschaft fuer Biotechnologische Forschung mbH in Braunschweig, Germany. After working for two years in downstream processing of proteins at IBA Biologics GmbH, he went to the Chemical Development of small molecules at Schering AG. In 2008 he moved to Bayer AG in Wuppertal in the same position.

Tracking of Host-Cell Proteins in Downstream Processes

Prof. Abraham M. LENHOFF

Prof. Abraham M. LENHOFF

Abraham Lenhoff is the Allan P. Colburn Professor of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware, where he has been on the faculty since 1984 and was Chair from 2012-7. He earned a Bachelor's degree from the University of Cape Town and Master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin, all in chemical engineering. His research is primarily on application of principles of thermodynamics, transport phenomena, biophysics and colloid science to protein separations and phase behavior.

Small Molecule Chromatographic Purification in Pharmaceutical R&D and Manufacturing

Dr Larry MILLER

Dr Larry MILLER

Larry Miller is a Senior Principal Scientist in the Discovery Analytical Sciences group at Amgen in Cambridge, MA. He graduated with a BS degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and a MS from Roosevelt University. He has over 30 years of experience performing small molecule achiral and chiral purifications at the mg to multi-kg scale. During his career he spent 20 years at Searle/Pharmacia and has spent the last 16 years at Amgen. At Amgen he is responsible for discovery and early development purification support utilizing preparative SFC and HPLC. Larry has over 30 peer-reviewed publications, over 40 presentations at scientific meetings and serves as co-instructor for SFC short courses in the US, Europe and Asia. In addition, Larry is the President of the Green Chemistry Group which organizes the annual SFC conference.

Automation and Digitalization in the Manufacturing of Therapeutic Proteins

Prof. Massimo MORBIDELLI

Prof. Massimo MORBIDELLI

Massimo Morbidelli received his Laurea in Chemical Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano and PhD at the University of Notre Dame. He is currently Professor at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and Professor Emeritus at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland).
His main research interest is in the area of biopharmaceutics and specifically on the integrated continuous manufacturing of therapeutic proteins, and its automation and digitalization.
Massimo Morbidelli is co-author of more than 750 papers, 23 international patents and six books, including the very recent ones on Continuous Biopharmaceutical Processes (2018), Cambridge University Press, coauthored with D Pfister and L Nicoud and Perfusion Cell Culture Processes for Biopharmaceuticals (2020), Cambridge University Press, coauthored with M Wolf and J-M Bielser. He is the first chemical engineer elected to the Italian Academy of Science (Accademia dei Lincei), serves as the Executive Editor of the ACS journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, and is the recipient of:
- R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2005
- Gerhard Damköhler-Medaille of DECHEMA.and VDI-GVC, 2014
- Excellence in Process Development Research Award by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2017
- Separations Science and Technology Award by the American Chemical Society, 2018
- ICB Award, Contributions to Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing, 2019
- Laurea Honoris Causa, Slovak University of Technology, Bratislava, 2019
In his career he advised more than 100 PhD students. He is a cofounder of ChromaCon Ltd., a spin-off company from his research group, which brings new chromatographic processes (MCSGP-technology) for the purification of proteins and peptides to the market (now acquired by YMC, Japan) and of DataHow Ltd. for the application of data science and machine learning in Biotechnology and specifically in the Biopharma Industry.

Cyclic Adsorption Processes. What else?

Dr Alirio RODRIGUES

Dr Alirio RODRIGUES

Alírio Rodrigues graduated in Chemical Engineering (1968) at University of Porto (Portugal) and received his Dr. Ing degree (1973) from the Université de Nancy (France). After teaching at the University of Luanda and University of Évora, he joined the Chemical Engineering Department at FEUP in 1976, where he is an Emeritus Professor (since 2013). He has been Visiting Professor at Université Technologie Compičgne, University of Virginia, Universidad de Oviedo and Universidade Federal Ceará. He was the founder of LSRE. His research activities are focused on cyclic adsorption/reaction processes (pressure swing adsorption, simulated moving bed, electric swing adsorption, expanded bed adsorption, parametric pumping) for olefins/paraffins separation, CO2 capture, hydrogen purification, proteins separation, etc., lignin valorization, perfume engineering and microencapsulation. His teaching activities were focused on chemical reaction engineering, separation processes, product engineering and system dynamics and process control. He has supervised more than 60 PhD students and published 740 papers in peer-reviewed journals (h-index of 67; source: Scopus, February 2020), several books and patents.

What is the Right Level of Purity? Benefits of Overpurifying and Underpurifying in Chromatography

Prof. Tuomo SAINIO

LAPPEENRANTA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Lappeenranta, Finland Read more

Prof. Tuomo SAINIO

Tuomo Sainio is professor in Separation Processes at LUT University (Lappeenranta, Finland) since 2014. He graduated as Doctor of Science (Technol.) in 2005 from the same university. He is a member of the Editorial Board in Adsorption journal. Prof. Sainio’s research focuses on separation processes based on adsorption, ion exchange and reactive extraction. Process design methods for single and multicolumn chromatographic processes are of particular interest. The main applications of his research are in chemical conversion and chromatographic purification of plant based molecules. Another field is hydrometallurgical recovery and purification of valuable metals from primary and secondary sources.

Invited Lectures

Industrial Applications of Process Scale SFC and its Associated Challenges

Dr Lalit CHORDIA

Dr Lalit CHORDIA

For over 30 years Dr. Lalit Chordia has pioneered research and development, manufacturing and commercialization of supercritical fluid technology, an environmentally friendly, materials processing technology. Dr. Chordia’s work extends across multiple industries to applications in food, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, chemicals and energy. Some examples of his involvement in supercritical fluid process and equipment technologies over the years are natural pharmaceutical, algae and spice extraction, drug purification and design, coatings, electronics cleaning, cooling, advanced biofuels and a host of other applications and equipment technologies.
Dr. Chordia received his bachelor’s degree from IIT Madras and his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985, both in Chemical Engineering. In 1982, Dr. Chordia co-founded Suprex Corp., and served as Vice President of Engineering and R&D. He then formed Thar Technologies in 1990. Thar has expanded its operations into multiple industries both domestically and internationally and has earned a reputation as a world leader in high pressure process and equipment technologies, particularly the use of supercritical carbon dioxide, which has zero ozone depletion and net zero global warming potential. Through Dr. Chordia’s leadership of the company, Thar has grown into multiple companies: 1) Thar Instruments, a separations science and equipment company since sold to Waters Corp., 2) Thar Process, a global provider of all-natural food and chemical processing solutions, 3) Thar Pharmaceuticals, a clinical stage drug development company, and 4) Thar Energy, a developer of advanced alternative green energy technology.
Dr. Chordia has been the principal investigator on multiple research and development projects, including two prestigious Advanced Technology Program awards through the National Institute of Standards and Technology and multiple Department of Energy projects. Dr. Chordia received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of IIT Madras in 2010 and the Carnegie Science Entrepreneur Award in 2015. In 2002 Dr. Chordia was honored as the SBA’s Small Business Exporter of the Year, and in 2016 he was elected a Fellow to The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2017, he received the regional Ernest and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Technology.
Beyond his own business and to remain loyal to his community commitment, Dr. Chordia is a Board Member of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation and serves on the Steering Committee for Sustainable Pittsburgh, is a Co-founder of the US-India Forum and is an Adjunct Research Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He also serves on the Allegheny County Green Action Team and is an appointee of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to the Western Pennsylvania District Export Council

Prof. Mathias FRANZREB

Prof. Mathias FRANZREB

Matthias Franzreb (°1963) received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Karlsruhe. During his Ph.D. focussing on ion exchange technology, he worked partly at PennState University, State College, USA under the supervision of Prof. Fred Helfferich. Afterwards he entered the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and started his work on magnetic micro-adsorbents and their combination with technical scale magnetic separation. In 2002, he finished his Habilitation and in 2009, he was awarded an Extraordinary Professorship by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Since 2014, he is Associate Director of the Institute of Functional Interfaces at the KIT. His research focuses on novel bioseparation techniques based on physical stimuli (magnetic, electrostatic, and thermal) as well as bioprocess modelling.

Mr Wolfgang KOEHNLEIN

Mr Wolfgang KOEHNLEIN

Wolfgang Koehnlein graduated as a Dipl.-Ing. (FH) in Biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan in 2001 and started his work life at Roche in Penzberg. The first position included experience in the GMP environment at different scales as well as troubleshooting activities on Äkta Explorer in the small scale.
He has been in the late stage purification development since 2003 and has been involved in many collaborations with major vendors during the last 15 years. He likes to work with students and has seen many of them complete their Masters Thesis under his supervision.
He is an expert for chromatography in his department and has been working intensively on identifying proper conditions for the application of multimodal resins.

Dr Hanna LEEK

Dr Hanna LEEK

Hanna is a chromatography expert with + 20 years’ experience within the field. With a background in chemical engineering Hanna joined AstraZeneca in 1998 and during her career, she has been one of the key players in introducing preparative chromatography to the site in Gothenburg and in the buildup of a large scale separation laboratory. Hanna has over the past 10 years been driving the introduction of SFC, the main purification technique used at the site.
Currently she is leading a team of separation scientists with the remit of solving both chiral and achiral separation problems, ranging from small molecules to large peptide conjugates. The work includes method development as well as preparative separation from mg to kg scale using HPLC and SFC.

Models in the SMB and SMBR Process Development

Dr Damien LEINEKUGEL LE COCQ

Dr Damien LEINEKUGEL LE COCQ

Damien Leinekugel-le-Cocq works at the Process Design and Modeling Division, IFP Energies Nouvelles. He was graduated in chemistry (CPE Lyon, 2001) and he received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Lyon 1 University in 2004. He has 15 years of experience in separation process development in Refining, Petro Chemistry and Green Chemistry. Particular focus is on chromatographic, adsorption and reaction coupling separation processes. He has contributed to numerous technology development for Eluxyl process (production of paraxylene by Simulated Moving Bed).

Prof. Susanna LEONG

Prof. Susanna LEONG

Susanna Leong graduated with a BEng (Chemical Engineering) and MPhil (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). She obtained her PhD (Chemical Engineering) from Cambridge University, and joined the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University as Assistant Professor. She subsequently moved to the Singapore Institute of Technology and currently oversees Applied Research as Assistant Provost. Her areas of research interest include biomolecular engineering and antimicrobial peptides, where she has contributed to more than 70 international peer reviewed publications and conference papers in these areas. She currently serves as an Editorial Board Member of Chemical Engineering Science and Food and Bioproducts Processing. She is also an Editorial Advisory Member of Heliyon. Susanna is both a Chartered and Professional Engineer, conferred by IChemE (UK) and Professional Engineering Board (Singapore), respectively.

Strategies and Emerging Technologies for Intensified Chromatography

Dr Gunnar MALMQUIST

Dr Gunnar MALMQUIST

Dr. Gunnar Malmquist is a Principal Scientist within the BioProcess R&D at GE Healthcare and has over four decades of chromatography experience. His current focus is resin design strategies, Quality by Design, and process analytical technology together with empirical and mechanistic modelling of chromatography data for smarter process development and increased process understanding.
Gunnar started his career at Pharmacia Biotech in 1979, working with quality control of chromatographic separation resins. He was later involved in the development of the ÄKTA chromatographic system and the UNICORN software, before moving on 1997 to characterization strategies and design of preparative chromatographic resins. He has been responsible for the design of several of the leading resins on the market, including MabSelect and Capto.
Gunnar graduated 1993 from Uppsala University with a Ph. D. in Analytical Chemistry with emphasis on multivariate data analysis applied to chromatographic separations.

Making Affinity Chromatography an Integral Part of Vaccine Development and Manufacturing

Dr Mikkel NISSUM

Dr Mikkel NISSUM

Mikkel is currently CMC Quality Head Italy at GSK vaccines leading the strategic quality support to vaccine development projects. Prior to this role, Mikkel was leading research and technical development of vaccine projects from pre-clinical until commercial launch. Mikkel was trained as analytical chemist and biochemist at the University of Southern Denmark, then moved to the University of Wurzburg as researcher in optical spectroscopy. Before joining GSK Vaccines in 2009, Mikkel worked in a number of biotech and medical technology companies as senior scientist and laboratory head including Becton Dickinson, Hamilton, Tecan and MWG-Biotech.

Title to be confirmed

Prof. Paul O'SHAUGHNESSY

JOHNSON MATTHEY, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Unexpected Behaviors in Ion-Exchange Chromatography

Dr Hector OSUNA

YPSO-FACTO, Lyon, France

Progress and Trends of Virus Based Biopharmaceuticals Purification

Dr Cristina PEIXOTO

Dr Cristina PEIXOTO

Cristina Peixoto working in Animal Cell Technology field since 1996, her PhD contributed to the establishment of several scalable purification processes for complex biopharmaceuticals, mainly virus and virus like particles for vaccine and gene therapy. Since, 2009 she is the Head of the Downstream Process Development lab. Meanwhile Cristina coordinated more than 12 Research Contract Projects with Industrial partners and participated as team member in several Portuguese FCT-funded research projects and EU project consortiums. She is invited lecturer since 2010 in several PhD programs. She published over 64 manuscripts in refereed international journals. More recently, the activities were expanded to stem cells purification and to the development of new purification trains for viral based biopharmaceuticals using advanced materials in integrated and continuous process.

Preparative Separation by Chromatography at Industrial Scale

Dr Antoni SEVERINO

Dr Antoni SEVERINO

Antoni Severino is currently Head of Preparative Chromatography at UCB Pharma Belgium for 6 years. He is in charge of the large scale purification and chiral separation platform within Global Chemistry Research Department. This group support Medicinal Chemistry Research in Braine (Belgium) and Slough (UK) by HPLC and SFC but also the Development and the Manufacturing for MCC processes.
He completed a PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Mons in Belgium. This thesis entitled “Experimental Study, Dynamic Modelling and Optimization of the Operating Conditions of Chromatographic Separation Processes by Simulated Moving Bed (SMB)” was funded by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research – FNRS.